Fred Voss

Fred Voss, a machinist for 32 years, has had three collections of poetry published by the UK’s Bloodaxe Books. His latest booklet is The Earth and the Stars in the Palm of Our Hand, published by Culture Matters.

Too many of the white machinists in this shop like Trumpthey are good menwith a tool steel square or a finely calibrated micrometer grippedin their handsor a newly-born granddaughter heldagainst their heartbeatsbut they have been fooled by a con artistin the white houseand I look over at the Indian milling machine operators from Guatemalaand El Salvadorsome of them rode the tops of boxcars into this countryotherssend money home to mothers living next to sacred riversI give them this countrythey do not engrave their names across their molybdenum-steel wrenchesand hide them away in toolboxes lockedwith chain and padlock like the white machiniststhey leave them spread across workbenches for other machiniststo useand tape pictures of beautiful waterfallsto their toolboxesand I look over at the Mexican tool grinders from East L.A. singing mariachithey would rather fill the air with beautiful melodythan wave a red white and blue flagI give them the futurethe Gabrielino Indian turret lathe operator whose ancestors lived in this L.A. basina thousand years agostanding straight with a truth in his heart Trump can never touch I put my hopein himand any man who needs a joba homea dreamI put my hope in the waterfalland the songand the hammer in the handwe white men took this countrywith our guns and our trains and our law booksbut it was never really oursits waterfallsits waves its condorsits skies its grass blades and sunsetsand seas its beautylike a wide-open workbench covered with tool steel wrenches free for allto use.

This poem was partly inspired by by the current horrific immigrant situation surrounding the Mexico/U.S. border.

Fred Voss sent in the following poem after reading the new collection by Martin Hayes, The Things Our Hands Once Stood For, published by Culture Matters and available here.

More important than Elvis's comb

by Fred Voss

What is more importantthan a cheap blue linoleum kitchen table in a little apartmenta spoon a bowl of hot clam chowder on that table a chairwith a back so a young man can sitand eat the chowderas he puts all the courage he has into trying to be a man who worksat a blast furnacewhat is more important than the stink of the steel as he heats it red-hotin roaring white-hot blast furnace flamehis going onlike the earth turning the whale singing the sun shiningeach knucklein the young man’s hands each drop of sweatthat slithersdown his backeach breath he takes each hope he hangs onto each black shoelaceof each boot around his feet as he sparks on a cutting torch at 1 amwhile everyone else sleepshe is the onewho built the roads nailed the roofs carried the buckets of cementdrove the red-hot rivets into bridges steered buses through crowded cities walkedthe naked steel skyscraper I-beams 1,000 feet above the street dovebeneath the waves stroking to save the drowning man brokethrough the smoking door to rush into the burning building and savethe babeare the stars more important the heroesof sagas the statues of Lincoln the combof Elvis the Nikesof Michael Jordan the eyelashes of Madonna the cross of Christ the bank vaultof a billionaire the sonatasof Beethoven more importantthan the time cardthe young man drops into the time clock KA-CHUNKas the eyeof the old man on the surface grinder twinkles winkingat the young man saying, “Yes, you can do it”and the young man steps upto a red-hot bar of steel and sparks on his cutting torchto carve out a tooth for the bucket of a bulldozerthat will movemountains.

Every once in a while a manfalls apart next to a machine with perfect thousandth-of-an-inch calibration marksall over its dialstrains roll on timetime clocks never miss a tickJupiter never stops revolving or orbiting the sunbut a manwho has come through a tin door with a lunch pail in his fist for 20 or 30 yearsand stood tall and firm as a redwood tree beside his machine turning out perfectdoor hinges or engine rings like clockworkcan suddenlystart shakingand collapse onto a steel stool and cry and not be able to turn outone more partas his micrometers calibrated to one-ten-thousandth-of-an-inch accuracy siton the workbench waiting for himto pick them uplike he has 10 million times beforethere are men between these factory tin walls where we work away our lives we hardlyknow at alluntil suddenlythey fire their fist into a foreman’s faceor start screaming at the top of their lungs and can’tstopas the tooling cabinets sit full of check pins ground to one-ten-thousandth-of-an-inch-perfectdiameterand the timeclock ticks its millionth perfect tiny tickand pendulums all over the earth swing according to Galileo’s formula for gravityand the machines roar and rattle and chew steelthere is a man out on the shop floor who can’t go onone more minuteand maybe a few weeks off to sit in a lounge chair on a beach and watch the waves roll inor play and sing silly songs with his 2-year-old granddaughterwill fix this manor maybe we will never see him againbut every so often there is a man on this hard concrete shop floor who must remind usnone of us are reallymachines.

A poem is a reason to get up in the morningthe crownsof 100 Sequoia redwood trees soaking in the suntogether a cupof ice water in the middle of the Sahara desert a poembounces across a midnight alley like the eyesof the black cat travelsaround the globe like the song of the whale at the bottomof the seano kingwill ever rule as completely as the laws of gravity trueas poems a poemis the kiss of a beautiful woman on the lips of a man who has just finished doing 20 yearsin San Quentin the hootingof the owl during a total eclipseof the sun a poemruns down an Olympic track like Jesse Owens’s black feet proving Hitler’s white master racea lie breaksopen the Bastille because no human being can ever be kept downforever takesoff his hat to no man as he strides like Walt Whitmandown his open roada poemis the heels of can-can dancers kickingtoward the stars Hamletsaying words that will last longerthan all the empires a poemis a strawberry ice cream cone lickedunder fireworksa manon a bridge over a river pressing a trumpet to his lips playing notes so beautiful he will never jumpinto the water below a poemhits harder than any hammer a poem is a girderin a skyscraper the spine of a saber-toothed tiger the hornof a midnight train crossing a bridge over the Mississippi Riveras Huck Finn paddles escaped slave Jim down its deep waterstoward freedom oldas a poem.

I want to change the world, I want to strike the spark or kick the pebble that will start the fire or the avalanche that will change the world a little.

- Fred Voss

Everyone can see the growing inequality, the precarious and low paid nature of employment, the housing crisis in our cities, the divisions and inequalities between social classes, the problems of obesity, drink and drugs, and the sheer everyday struggle to pay the bills for many working people. In this situation, Fred Voss is like a prophet. He is warning us of the consequences of the way we live, he is telling truth to power, and he is inspiring us with a positive vision of a possible – and desirable – socialist future.

It is the morning after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States and I am at my machine and I grip my machine’s handlewith my palmthe steel handle is still solid and hardagainst my soft flesha racist hate-filled egomaniac dictatorial sexual predator swindler infant elected to lead310 million peopleand I turn the handle to my machine and my machine table moves exactly 100 thousandths of an inch I want to believe that a thousandth of an inch is still a thousandth of an inchrivers flow downhilla dinosaur boneis 65 million years old he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword but Donald Trumpwill soon have his finger on the nuclear trigger and Nero fiddledwhile Rome burned and I put on my leather gloves and graba 50-pound block of 4130 steel and drop itinto my vise bolted to my milling machine table and send the carbide teeth of a shell mill plowing through the raw steelI want to believe when ice melts it still turns into waterLady Macbethstill can’t wash those drops of blood off her handI want to believe Christ and Buddhaknew somethingBeethoven’sMoonlight Sonata is still beautiful rosesstill open train wheelsstill can’t roll without the hands of men like mewho make themI plant my feet on this concrete machine shop floorsurely the mockingbird has not forgotten how to singsurely a human being still knowsright from wrong surelythe sun still rises steel is still hard and men like Trump fallin the endsure as my hammerhead ringing out when I strike itagainst steelsure as Victor Hugo’s statueNelson Mandela’s heartthe cat sitting in the sun on your windowsillthe sweat on the back of every workingman on earthand the stars still there shiningin the sky.

Fred Voss's latest collection, The Earth and the Stars in the Palm of Our Hand, is published by Culture Matters and is available from http://manifestopress.org.uk/

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